ROCHESTER >> It took nearly 15 years, but there’s finally a sign on Main Street letting passersby know Give Thanks Bakery & Cafe is actually there.

Without it, you’d have to sort-of stumble upon the hidden shop: The small operation carries a mailing address of 225 South Main, but it’s buried in a mum alley, tucked between West Second and Third streets.

That’s why owner Gerald Matthes said customer service has played the biggest role in the European-style bakery’s 15-year run. Give Thanks survived a deep economic recession, which closed a number of nearby businesses, virtually by word-of-mouth.

The only actual presence of the bakery on Rochester’s main corridor is that newly-minted sign. But Give Thanks’ reputation has managed to continually bring customers around the corner and down the alley to its welcoming storefront near Walnut Boulevard.

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The key, Matthes said, is his 15 employees — six pastry chefs, the rest part-time specialists — have a “gift” that makes customers “feel happy about the day after they walk out the door.”

“We’ve been able to turn the retail experience upside down,” he said. The “coldness” some may experience from other businesses is “what we’re trying to dismiss, and replace it with warmth.”

A native German, Matthes rediscovered his family’s long lineage of artisan baking while on a business trip to his homeland in 1985. Wishing to keep his family’s tradition alive, Matthes trained in artisan baking at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and the National Baking Center in Minneapolis.

He completed the jump into baking at the tail-end of a 39-year marketing career, which included stints overseeing Chrysler and Jeep.

“After 39 years of that, (it became) exhausting,” Matthes said. “So, I traded it in for this exhausting job.”

In 1997, after garnering experience with a handful of well-known bakers across the country, Matthes decided it was time to open his own shop. A year later, Give Thanks Bakery and Cafe was constructed in the same building it remains today.

Matthes says he was happy to ditch corporate life for an entrepreneurial endeavor, but there’s one thing he misses about his previous career: traveling.

“I think I went to over 40 countries at one point,” he said. “I do miss that.”

Matthes, who carries a slight English accent, said Give Thanks also thrives because of his insistence to use only natural ingredients — all-natural flour, purified water and sea salt.

“We don’t take shortcuts or use artificial ingredients,” like yeast, he said.

“The quality is much higher.”

Small shop, large praise

Even with a small footprint, Give Thanks’ products have a large presence: The shop provides catering — which generates about 45 percent of its revenue, Matthes said — to big name restaurants, like Birmingham’s Forest Grille and the Brookshire inside downtown Rochester’s Royal Park Hotel. Nearby country clubs get in on the action, too.

Locals from across metro Detroit visit Tuesday through Saturday for the vast amount of handcrafted loaves, all baked in an imported French hearth oven, including the Rochester Rye, Golden Semolina and Asiago Cheese-garlic. Those with a sweet tooth can find tiramisu made from marscapone, a variety of croissants and a unique apfelstrudel.

Matthes said he still plays an integral role in the day-to-day operations.

“Whenever anybody’s sick or on vacation I’ll come in and work nights,” he said.

But he says he’s done “very little” baking at home since the shop opened in 1999. Why?

As he was still honing his craft, Matthes said he managed to ruin his wife’s oven in a disastrous baking incident.

“I had to buy her a new one,” he said, laughing. “I wrecked it completely.”

The bakery added a 2,000 square foot production facility about eight years ago, Matthes said. But, he says, that’ll be the extent of the businesses’ physical presence.

“We’re not going to change it,” he said. “We don’t ... have to deal with a crescendo of volume” that would come with an expansion or additional shops.

Plus: Matthes loves being situated in Rochester.

The city is “chock-full of organizations doing great things,” he said, adding Give Thanks dedicates 10 percent of its revenue to local non-profits, like Suite Dreams.

Matthes, who lives in Bloomfield Hills with Margaret, a kindermusik teacher in Birmingham, said he fell in love with the city after moving from Leicestershire, England to the United States in 1964.

“Every time I came here, I always felt good,” he said of Rochester. “It’s a wonderful town.”

An expansion “would have to cause us to make drastic decisions,” he said, adding sarcastically that it would turn the business into just “another bakery.”

About the Author

Ryan Felton is a staff writer at The Oakland Press who covers Rochester, Rochester Hills, Oakland Township, transportation and technology. Blogging about Detroit at detroit.jalopnik.com. Reach the author at ryan.felton@oakpress.com
or follow Ryan on Twitter: @ryanfelton13.